[For awakening your first weapon, you have awakened an inventory]
The words flashed across Tatehan's retina.
An inventory?
He knew what an inventory was. It was where weapons were stored. At least from what he had read in system webnovels back on Earth.
Since he now had an inventory, he could try finding more weapons and adding them to it.
The idea of summoning a weapon in the middle of a fight felt cool to imagine.
Name: Tatehan
Level: 3
Species: Human (Enhanced)
Knowledge: 34/100 [+10]
Repair points: 11/100
[ABILITIES]
• Gravity Manipulation - Level 5
• Regeneration (partial) - Level 4
• Kinetic Absorption - Level 1
Inventory: Rock sword
He wondered why he didn't get repair points though…
Doing his observation, he realized he hadn't actually gotten any materials related to repairing the spaceship at this point.
The lunatic carapace brutenecks only came with upgrade glowing rocks, while the normal carapace brutenecks were the ones who came with the restoration cores.
Thinking about it, even though the restoration cores might actually be repairing the spaceship in the technical sense, to Tatehan it felt like they weren't actually doing the job.
Restoring the modes was like magic—it didn't require any actual repairing. All he had to do was put the cores in the reception slot and boom!
Magic!
Tatehan looked up ahead now, and he could see outlines of many more places to come.
The spaceship's AI had told him that the spaceship was hidden in a place so secluded it was certain no human would be coming here. Now that he was about to leave the bruteneck area, he couldn't imagine all the dreadful places he'd have to face.
Oh!
The spaceship's AI had actually given him a verbal map, listing the places he would go through before he got to where the mauler was.
He could still remember its words:
[First, the familiar bruteneck hunting grounds. You should encounter minimal threats there.]
Tatehan laughed out loud. He should have kept it down in order not to attract any other vicious creatures, but well, fuck it!
You should encounter minimal threats?
It was the opposite. He had faced threats that almost killed him.
But with a shrug, he decided it was worth it in the end, considering what he had gotten out of it.
His mind thought about the next thing the spaceship AI had said:
[Second, a canyon network with narrow passages and unstable terrain. Exercise caution; the rock faces are prone to sudden collapses.]
This was what had terrified him the most (besides eventually fighting the Hexapod mauler). And with his partial regeneration power at level 0.5 before he left the spaceship, he didn't know how he was supposed to survive a canyon where rocks were certain to fall.
Now, thinking about it, with his partial regeneration at level four, he was relaxed. He almost had an ability that allowed him to absorb any hit.
It was limited, though, as the ability could only function while he was wearing the suit. And it could only take three hits before a reset, which he would have to wait a certain amount of time to use again.
But it was doable. He just had to be fast. He looked at the sky again, it was getting darker. Nighttime was approaching, so he needed to find a place to sleep before continuing.
He looked around him and could only see dead bodies.
He decided to just keep moving. Perhaps up ahead he would see something.
With one last look at the corpses, he whispered:
"Thanks for the gifts."
With that, he began to walk slowly forward, the rock sword in his hands. He summoned the visor, and it cloaked his face like a mask.
With the light fabric from the armor flowing back slightly, Tatehan started to walk away.
With steeze, with aura, like he was a futuristic medieval knight.
Squinting, he came up with a nickname. In case he was to meet other humans and was asked what his name was, he would say he was:
THE KNIGHT!
____
Since he walked much slower than he had when he left the spaceship, it took him some time before he arrived at the end of the bruteneck area.
He knew it was the end because he saw this across his retina:
[99% out of the bruteneck area]
He had drunk a whole bottle of water at one point during the walk, the run and the fight being the main reasons.
Now, he rolled the sword in his hands. So how many more footsteps would he have to take to complete the remaining one percent? Two, three, four?
How would he know where the end of the bruteneck area exactly was?
The answer was right before him. Looking sideways, further down to his left, he could see a long row of boulders in a line.
He looked to his right and could see the same thing.
Were boulders symbolic in this part of Mars? What was it with boulders?
The first thing he had seen when he left the spaceship, after the brutenecks, was a boulder, and now there was a row of them?
Who had even put the boulders there in the first place?
Tatehan wanted to scratch his chin, but because of the visor on his face, he couldn't. The place was much darker than when he had survived the encounter with the knight bruteneck and the lunatic carapace brutenecks.
If not for the much-enhanced vision due to wearing the visor, he wouldn't be seeing at all.
Because there was no light, not even a sliver of anything bright apart from the glow coming from the sky.
He wondered if time was much slower here on Mars than it was on Earth.
He yawned now, and if not for the benefits he was receiving from the helmet of the knight bruteneck assembled armor, he would have unsummoned it. But first, he needed somewhere to sleep.
Where to sleep seemed to be his problem now. There was no place to sleep here, and the only option would be to sleep on the ground, and he didn't think that would be a good idea.